I was fucking around with Hugh McElroy's bass the other day, and the tone knob is totally busted. I pointed this out to him, and he goes, "Dude, I play dub, I haven't used that thing in years," and then he laughed at me.

That was funny.

good god, a room full of bassplayers and no one mentions flatwound strings.

FLATWOUND STRINGS, MOTHERFUCKER!

roll back tone all the way. boost bass, cut the boomy lo mids, cut treble about halfway to 3/4.

My old man used to put flatwounds on his '62 jazz, he played country. That and his 62 Twin reverb were my initial exposure to the bass. They may have even used thumbpicks then. Once I discovered round wounds, I never looked back, unitil NOW. Sounds like a fun project.

For most purposes, anything other than a volume knob on a bass seems to be overkill for my own style.

BadComrade wrote:Page 1 of this thread, April 17th:

BadComrade wrote:Flatwounds would help too...

i'm such an ass. thanks for reminding me. your name is toally apt, you shite friend, i.e. bad comrade.

though i think a bigger deal would be made about these to get that tone. seriously, it should be the first step.

particularly to a fellow who wants only a volume knob.

fender stainless steel flats are good. they get you the deep rubbery slidy tone.

benadrian wrote:A guy I knew played an 800rb through two 1-15 cabinets. the 800RB is bi-amp-able and has two power amps built in. One is a 300w for lows, and the other is 100w for highs. The bi-amping is switchable, and you can run both power amps full range as well.

He ran both 15th through the 300 watt power amp at full rage. However, when he wanted a really deep sound, he'd turn the bi-amping on. Since he only used the low frequency power amp, all the highs were rolled out by the crossover network.

I was suprised by how well it worked.

I do this with my GK 800rb as well. It does work quite nice- even makes my Travis Bean bass sound quite deep on the neck pickup (ala Wobble). I did this in live settings a few years ago. In reverberant rooms especially, I always had to back off on the volume a bit after turning the bi-amping on, as the new low frequencies present would induce bowel evacuations or clock the entire band.

GK's are nice amps to have on the road if you like moving your own equipment and not having to worry about slipped disks, back pain, muscles pulled by moving an Ampeg SVT class tube amp. Live, the sound is very close to the high quality tube Ampegs.. or at least much more so than any of the other solid state amps I am familiar with (Mesa, Peavey, Fender, even the Ampeg Solid State SVTs).

I know when I play a P bass my hand position has a large effect on the tone and attack. A lot of times during a song I change positions relative to the bridge to move from a support mode to push a part more forward.

Two pickup basses which have a neck pick-up like the jazz I think offer the ability to get more presence with less attack. I don't change my strings very frequently not due to cost but I like when the edge goes off them and there seems to be less string noise. The strings on my main bass have not been changed in over 10 years. Flat-wounds are nice but too dead for me. (I have a bunch of basses some have fresh strings for more treble)

As well I think that using your fingers with your thumb so that you have can use your fingers to do some deadening is helpful. Again I cannot stress the use of a graphic EQ or really good tone control at the amp end of the equation.

Wobble didn't use the scroll bass that much, actually. He was photgraphed with it a lot, it seems, but that's it.

Basically the rig:

Jazz bass
SVT head
Ampeg cab
Turn the stack around backwards so it's against the wall
Mic the room

That's it, at least for the Flowers of Romance sound, which I assume is what you're looking for.

I wonder why he didn't use a P-bass. Those tend to be a little deeper than the Jazzes.

-A

I've been able to approximate what I wanted. I think that roundwounds were key, but the Ampeg angle is interesting, and I know that I'll be looking for an SVT as my next gear purchase. I played through one earlier this year, and was amazed at how easily I was able to get a good tone very quickly, and generally for bass, I always felt that tube amps were too finicky.

I put roundwounds on my Jazz. Someone told me the older the better (Shakespear claims not to have changed his strings in 20 years), and I believe that since these still have some slinky "spring" to them. All mids and lows off on the amp (I turned off the eq bands, and used the tone knobs), and tone pots off on the bass, volume at max. Faced the amp about 2 feet away from a wall in a small dull room, and used 2 of those flat mikes (proper name escapes me now) placed about 6 feet away from the amp on each side of the room. I received a very deep and present tone. Once the roundwounds are broken in, I bet that the tone is even closer.

I appreciate all the assistance, I am coming away from this experiment much more knowledgable. The rest is up to my bass playing technique getting better, I now have the tools.

alex maiolo wrote:
Basically the rig:

Jazz bass
SVT head
Ampeg cab
Turn the stack around backwards so it's against the wall
Mic the room

That's it, at least for the Flowers of Romance sound, which I assume is what you're looking for.

the bass on the "Flowers of Romance" must be so low frequency, I can't hear it.

Wasn't it wiped off the mix in a pissy heroin fit by Levene and a drunk Lydon?

Do you mean "Metal Box"?

mr.arrison wrote:

alex maiolo wrote:
Basically the rig:

Jazz bass
SVT head
Ampeg cab
Turn the stack around backwards so it's against the wall
Mic the room

That's it, at least for the Flowers of Romance sound, which I assume is what you're looking for.

the bass on the "Flowers of Romance" must be so low frequency, I can't hear it.

Wasn't it wiped off the mix in a pissy heroin fit by Levene and a drunk Lydon?

Do you mean "Metal Box"?

Yeah! Ooops. Shit...
My intent was to call Metal Box by it's more commonly known (and available) name of Second Edition, but I said Flowers instead.
Sorry about that.

-A